GPURenderPipelineDescriptor

GPURenderPipeline is a render pipeline state object in WebGPU that encapsulates the configuration required to render primitives. It binds together shader stages, fixed-function state, and layout information the GPU uses during a render pass. A pipeline is created from a descriptor that specifies the vertex and fragment shader modules and their entry points, the vertex state describing vertex buffers and attributes, the primitive state (such as topology, culling, and front-face orientation), any depth-stencil state, multisampling, and the pipeline layout that governs resource bindings. The shaders are typically authored in WGSL and supplied as shader modules.

Once created, the pipeline is bound to a render pass via a render pass encoder by calling setPipeline. The pipeline then directs how vertex data is transformed through the vertex stage, how fragments are produced by the fragment stage, and how colors are blended and written to color targets. Because pipeline creation can be expensive and the object is immutable after creation, applications usually reuse pipelines and may implement caching to minimize state changes and compilation.

In WebGPU, render pipelines are distinct from compute pipelines, which use a separate GPURenderPipeline-like object for compute workloads. The GPURenderPipeline is tied to the capabilities of the underlying hardware and driver; certain features or formats may affect its creation. Errors during creation frequently indicate mismatches between shader inputs and the vertex state, or unsupported color or depth formats on the target device. The API emphasizes explicit configuration to ensure predictable rendering behavior across platforms.